


Detention

by NightsMistress



Category: Final Fantasy Type-0
Genre: Gen, Introspection, post chapter 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-18 23:03:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4723583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Class Zero believe that Kurasame waited in relative comfort for communications to be restored, while they ran from the Militesi and Concordian forces. It didn't go like that at all, but Kurasame sees no point in correcting the misapprehension.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Detention

**Author's Note:**

  * For [godsbow_lithium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/godsbow_lithium/gifts).



Since his return to Akademia, these four stone walls have been his world. He only knows that they are stone when he rests his hand on them, because to his eye they are mirror-bright, reflecting back his own unmasked face. It’s a Reflect spell, imbued into the stone itself, and highly experimental. Sorcery had decided that it was still too unstable a spell to cast in the field and so Kurasame had never thought to see it being applied.

Lucky him.

The mirror-spells deceive the eye about how large the room truly is. He knows, because he has inspected these cells before when he was an unassigned Tribune, that the room is a few paces wider and longer than the bed he sits on. The chill in the air is new, cool enough to make him uncomfortable and make his old scars ache, but not cold enough to make him ill, suggesting that someone tuned the cooling spell a deliberate amount. It’s a ridiculously petty act, likely designed to remind him that once he could walk through ice storms of his own creation without a flinch. He can see the strings of the puppet master in this, and he will not dance to the Provostmaster’s tune. 

He lies back against the hard mattress of the cell bed, closes his eyes against the mirrored surface of the Reflect spell in the ceiling stones, and pulls the blanket over him to ward off the chill. Here, as comfortable as he can be under the circumstances, he thinks about what he has seen and tries to find meaning in it. For all that he has been told that he has been detained to be questioned about what he knew about the assassination of the Queen of Concordia, he knows that it is a lie. He knows nothing other than it was not his cadets who did it, and he has said that already.

He can deduce that the Queen is dead; the absence of her in his memories is proof of that. What his memories tell him is that the Chancellor met the Queen, but he cannot recall what happened at that meeting. His recollections are vague, suggesting that he, as the Chancellor’s escort, had spent a great deal of time with her. He assumes that it has to do with the Fabula Pact and the consequences of it being invoked, but he cannot remember what was said. 

What he remembers more clearly is the immediate aftermath of her assassination. Militesi soldiers had descended on the Rubrum diplomatic contingent with frightening speed, faster than he would have thought possible if the Queen’s assassination was truly a surprise. He remembers dispatching the class orderly, Aria, to bring Class Zero to the airship immediately, as they were not responding to the COMM. He remembers the feeling of ice magic flowing through his fingertips to blossom into deadly flowers through the bodies of the soldiers who sought to stop them escaping, the heft and weight of his sword as he carved a line though the military blockade for the Chancellor to slip through. He remembers looking to the sky at the shriek of dragons, and thinking _this is not how Rubrum ends._

And it wasn’t. At least, not yet. 

He does not think that Rubrum was involved in the Queen’s assassination — clearly that was Milites and perhaps Concordia as well, though why they would assassinate their own Queen is beyond him — but Akademia was quick to take advantage of the chaos and act in accordance with their own wishes, and not those of the Crystal. The Crystal has bestowed more grace on the Class Zero cadets than anyone he has seen, and he cannot believe that it is the Crystal’s will that they be sacrificed on an altar of rank ambition.

No. Speaking this will achieve nothing, and he will limit himself only to facts. Speculation will not help save his cadets, certainly not speculation that the people trying him for treason are themselves disloyal to everything that Rubrum stands for.

He remembers trying to contact his cadets repeatedly on the COMM once they reached the airship. He remembers another Tribune, attached to Class Two, trying to contact Class Zero as well, with no response. He remembers the Cadetmaster turning on her heel to demand of him what his cadets had done to their COMM, and as he was handcuffed and escorted into the most secure place on the airship, he remembers the triumphant, smug curl of the Provostmaster’s lip as he ordered Kurasame be detained until further notice. 

Kurasame hadn’t resisted the arrest. He knew that he could fight free of the restraint but what would that achieve? The airship was the only way to rescue his cadets, and his resisting arrest would only delay their extraction from enemy territory.

The idea that Class Zero had tampered with their COMM is absurd. They wouldn’t know _how_. Tampering with COMMS is something that trainees learn, but the vast majority of Class Zero had never been trainees. They were superlative combat specialists, proficient in both weapons and magic, but outside of this area they knew nothing about the world and were as ignorant as children. Class Zero’s naiveté about the grim reality of war made it clear that no-one had taught them properly of the life they were to lead. The other cadets chose the life of an Agito Cadet, had struggled and strived for it with a dream of becoming Agito. Kurasame knew and understood that, as that was how he had come to Akademia. Class Zero had only known the chaos of a battlefield, without knowing why they fought.

Sorcery had done them no favours in this. How could anyone believe that twelve cadets, the best in Akademia, didn’t know what a raw trainee knew?

If it wasn’t for the fact that Kurasame had had to spend the first hours as Commander teaching Class Zero how to live outside Sorcery, he wouldn’t have believed it himself. No class of cadets had had to be taught how to buy weapons and supplies before Class Zero. If he thought it would help, he would gladly tell the tribunal about how the Class Zero cadets’ loyalty to their adopted mother means that they were less likely to betray Rubrum, and that their lack of personal aspirations means that they are utterly incorruptible. Of course, his assessments of the integrity of others tends not to be highly valued. That's what happens when you are the last survivor of the Class Three of ten years ago, the only surviving Champion of Rubrum, and you only earned that title by being betrayed.

A pity. For all of their naiveté, Class Zero are more true and pure than any cadets Kurasame had seen.

They might actually _be_ Agito.

And Akademia despises them because it was the Archsorceress who found them and made them what they are.

He must stick to the facts when they question him. The orders that Class Zero were given were to utilise their free time as fitting Agito cadets, and that they would return to Akademia in the morning. He knows that Queen Andoria of Concordia has been assassinated. He is unaware of any order to assassinate the Queen, nor was there any radio communication on the frequency used for Class Zero. He knows that there is something stopping Rubrum from contacting Class Zero. He knows that Milites acted swiftly and had attempted to prevent Rubrum’s departure. There has been no contact between Kurasame and Class Zero since his order to them to use shore leave.

By the time he is summoned, Kurasame knows what he is to say. His half-mask obscures his bleak smile from view, and he stares levelly at his captors. He understands that the Akademia brass are likely to extract a reprisal from him for refusing to implicate his cadets or himself in an act that he truly believes that they did not commit. He understands that he will not survive whatever reprisal Akademia proposes, but in accepting it without hesitation, he can keep his cadets safe.

His life is subject to the will of the Crystal. The Crystal guides his path, as it guides all of their paths, and he believes that Class Zero will shape Rubrum for the better.

“I’m ready,” he says, and holds his hands out to be handcuffed once again.


End file.
